StudioLumière’s third animated feature will, like the two that came before it, stick to the traditional 2D Format.

Lunanime, the production arm of the Lumière Group, has made two highprofile features co-produced with France - De rouille et d’os (Rust and Bone), directed by Jacques Audiard; and Les cowboys, the directorial debut of Thomas Bidegain, screenwriter of Audiard’s Un prophète - as well as two Flemish films: Offline and Le Ciel Flamand, both directed by Peter Monsaert.
But that’s only half the story: in 2010, Lunanime set up an animation department, StudioLumière, which has so far co-produced the Oscarnominated Une vie de chat (A Cat in Paris, 2010) and Phantom Boy (2015), the latter backed by Screen Flanders.
Currently keeping 15 animators busy in the Ghent studio under artistic director Pascal Vermeersch, meanwhile, is Funan, directed by French-born Cambodian writer/director Denis Do. “I discovered it in Annecy three years ago when it was presented at the pitching sessions,” says production head Annemie Degryse, “and I’ve had a crush on it ever since.”

Phantom Boy

I discovered Funan in Annecy three years ago and I’ve had a crush on it ever since.

Annemie Degryse

THE NEW PEOPLE

Since then, she has been helping lead producer Sebastian Onomo of Les Films d’Ici complete the package, 18 minutes of which will be produced in Flanders. Subtitled ‘The New People’, Funan is set during the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia and follows the desperate search of a mother for her four-year-old son from whom she has been separated. “It’s the director’s personal story,” says Degryse. “He didn’t live in Cambodia - he was born afterwards - but it’s the story of his mother and his brother during that period.”
StudioLumière has dipped its toes into 3D with An Vrombaut’s children’s short, The Tie, which won a Crystal Bear in Berlin in 2015. But the 3D work on that was farmed out to another studio; and, like both its predecessors, Funan will be in 2D, a format to which Degryse remains fiercely committed. “That’s partly a matter of personal taste,” she says, “But there are already a lot of 3D studios in Belgium – there are two in Ghent alone - and I think it’s important to focus.”